10.0 Speculation

Community General Discussion
101

For 10.0 I hope for:

  • A Return To Simplicity - No more borrowed power. We level up, get new passive skills that improve our active skills (to avoid button bloat), get new talent rows for levels 60 and presumably 70, that are a mix of passives, actives that replace existing skills, and just plain old new actives (again to avoid button bloat but with more buttons as an option for those who want them). A new talent row would be added every time the level cap is raised.

  • Better Writing - We need better story, that doesn’t feel like the character motivations are contrived, and makes the characters we interact with feel more realistic and intelligent. The Horde need to stop being villain batted. The Alliance need major NPC’s to be more pragmatic and sometimes even questionable in their behavior. They could even stand to have a villain or three! Lore needs to become relevant again and be showcased in game more (we still don’t know how new Void Elves are made cough), not just through out-of-game media.

  • Less RNG And More Determinism - More reliable ways to get things so we aren’t at the mercy of RNG as much as we currently are.

  • A Return Of Valor For All - Valor points return as a currency earnable from emissaries, heroic dungeons, mythic 0/mythic+ dungeons, and raids, with more being earned from higher difficulty content. Valor would once again be useable to buy gear from vendors for a deterministic gear acquisition path. Valor would have a weekly cap to how much could be earned so as to pace gear acquisition through this method but to still offer flexibility. Players would not be obligated to log in every day. They could bang out their weekly valor in a day, or do it slowly over the course of the week as their schedules and desires dictate.

  • A Return Of Worthwhile Crafting - No more “ranks” for recipes. You acquire basic recipes from trainers. You acquire rarer recipes from a variety of sources such as quests (bop), achievements (bop), dungeon bosses (boe), raid bosses (boe), world vendors (bop), rep vendors (bop), world mobs (boe), and possibly other events. Special non-binding materials drop from dungeon end bosses (from heroic difficulty onward), and raid bosses (all difficulties, including LFR) for use with more powerful recipes. New recipes added with each major content patch. The system for optional components to choose secondary stats and increase item level remains (it’s a good addition to crafting imo). Tertiary stats become addable in a deterministic fashion via craftable/sellable enhancement items (like enchantment scrolls). Sockets become addable to certain slots by craftable/sellable enhancement items (like belt buckles used to). Specializations would return and crafting would once again provide player power perks.

  • New Dungeons Added Throughout An Expansion - It’s ok if art assets are re-used in creative ways to do this. Something that FFXIV used to do (but abandoned for some reason), was to make some dungeons quite massive yet have certain sections inaccessible on one difficulty, and then in a later difficulty of that dungeon, open up the closed off paths and close off the previous paths and changing the mobs and bosses in the dungeon. They also provided a story reason for why you went back to that dungeon and why the mobs within have changed. This is an efficient way to add “new” dungeons without having to devote time and resources to custom art assets every time. I’m not saying new dungeons should never have brand new art, only that the number of dungeons (and thus variety) can be padded via this method from time to time.

  • A Massive Amount Of New Customization For All - Whether its brand new assets, variants of existing assets, or assets straight up copied from other races, all races need more options. Much more. In addition I’d like to see spell customization come to the game through a “theme” selection option at the barber or some other NPC. If I’m a Night Elf Holy Priest, and want all my spells to be the soft blue-white of Elune rather than the standard yellow holy, I would have the option to choose that. And while a dye system may be beyond what Blizzard is willing to invest in due to how textures are made in WoW, a tinting system could be added using the same tech that recolors weapons when using the Wrathchill and Void Edge illusions. Speaking of weapon illusions, ranged weapons should be able to enjoy glowy effects too!

  • New Specs Added to Existing Classes - While new classes are still welcome, they do nothing for those who are happy with their current character class. New specs give existing characters an opportunity for new roles (like say mages getting a chronomancy themed healing spec), or new ways to perform a role they already have (like say giving Demon Hunters a ranged dps role themed around throwing glaives). The classes that only have access to the DPS role could stand to have a new spec that is a non-dps role.

What I expect from 10.0:

  • To Be Disappointed - and that’s a darn shame.
5 Likes
102

Maybe :stuck_out_tongue: Blizzard does like their systems at this point!

103

No more “Geezer Hoarding” with extra classes through expansions. WoW 2.0 before another class/profession/race. Please and thank you.

104

The Black Dragon flight plays pretty heavily into Goblin lore actually. Deathwing’s elementium armor was forged by Goblins, he used Goblins as intermediaries when interfacing with the Human kingdoms during the Warcraft II era (Day of the Dragon), Nefarian recruited Goblin scientists to help further his experiments, Deathwing was responsible for the Goblin player character losing their home, etc.

Mad Science is both a Goblin thing and a Black Dragon thing and that’s where their biggest overlap happens to be. That said, I don’t know if I want a re-rehash of the whole Nefarian thing. We did that in Vanilla, we did that in Cata, we did it again in Classic.

105

Goblin would betray anyone for gold.
They have no moral ground.

1 Like
106

I want a Twisting Nether expansion. It would be nice if Ethereal were to become playable.

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107

Good point, yes from a game play perspective we must be able to move on to the next expansion. Personally, I still feel like there are entities that we should not be able to directly beat even while empowered, I think in certain instances when we have to “beat” a threat that the traditional raid should not be able to beat, they need to fit it perfectly into the story, such that we play a pivotal role in the solution. Imagine, if the players are ants, or bacteria by comparison to some huge threats, we could do something at our level that lays the groundwork for something larger - an example would be, if we worked to free or empower a much larger more powerful friendly entity, I mean, when we were “empowered” to kill N Zoth, it was ridiculous, that amount of power would have torn our mortal bodies apart, would have been better if the raid worked to keep bosses off of the power source while the power source empowered a much more powerful being. I suppose they could have our spirits, our consciousness enter into some other more powerful housing, or being if we are going to fight the actual big threat. Not always, but sometimes, I just feel like some big threats are too great even while empowered, to send us to do the task, but your right in that for the game to be playable we have to somehow overcome the ultimate obstacle. Again, you’re right in that the writing and set up for these grand battles is of key importance.

108

This is a fair point - I do have a Goblin Rogue named Kryll, after all. I still believe it to be a tenuous connection, though. Certainly not strong enough to bridge the thematic gap between having a dragon-based setting and a tech-based class.

109

Just do Binding Coil as a storyline. Titans scooped up Galakronds heart and put it into a floating Titan facility to regenerate as a secret weapon against Sargeras. High tech meets dragon fantasy.

There’s a million ways you can approach it with some level of creativity.

Heck, that fat goblin guy could make a solid end of raid boss in 10.1. Goblin riding a cybernetic undead dragon, that could be pretty awesome.

110

You mean dragoon?

111

I mean, you can pull anything of of your behind if you put your mind to it. The result might even be fun and creative. But there’s still a dissonance there - a dissonance that hasn’t existed for any class that has been added thus far.

112

They added Goblins and Worgen during Cata, even though the thematic connection was very loose compared to Blood Elves and Draenei in BC or Pandas in MoP.

There’s something of a precedent there. In fact, the connection of Tinker and Dragon is pretty apparent upon reflection - we got Goblins as a race during the last dragon expansion. The goblin/gnome themed class in dragon expansion makes a lot of sense from that lens.

113

To go in depth.

Wrathion is looking for the isles. He also has mother in his cool kids club now.

Maybe they combine the draconic essences recovered in 8.3, mother’s titan tech, and new tech from the geniuses in undermine to uncover th dragon isles from their titanic cloak, similar to uldum.

114

I think another key element missing in the narrative is that every victory just feels so hollow. Nothing is ever really lost or sacrificed, our players barely even change. It used to be back in the day you would defeat the iconic bad guy and all of a sudden your raid got immensely more powerful, those big two hand weapons started coming out… hand of rag, bonereavers edge, ashkandi, destroyer of worlds, dark edge of insanity.

These days your biggest reward is not from doing content its from opening a chest that says “thank you for staying subscribed pick an item”. We go from loot pinata to loot pinata with a very very weak and flimsy narrative tying it together.

115

So we’d get Tinkers via a corrupted wish, much the same way that Alliance players got High Elves?

116

10.0 speculation- it never happens and WoW stops with shadowlands and saves us all the pain

117

Is that a hope or an expectation?

118

i’ll never tell :wink:

119

Also, no. I do not mean Dragoon (although I also love that class). Final Fantasy’s Dragoons tend to be acrobatic dragon killers. I would envision a draconic class in this universe to be primal, explosive, and an agent of dragons rather than being antagonistic.

120

You’re a damn fool if you think 10.0 isn’t happening, with all the stuff goin on this game still brings more revenue than any other mmo out there.