I don’t think you could really tie rewards and unlocks to the zone state without turning it into a PvP Zone or Battleground. Consider how sharding and groupfinding works, that wouldn’t work. But the idea itself is something I share. It would turn every zone into evergreen content. They could bake in some permeability in that who or what is showing up in said zone could change depending on the content.
I don’t know how much faith I have in Blizzard to stop shackling themselves to The Formula and truly innovate stuff like that in WoW these days. I’d love to see it, but I don’t expect to.
This. Some of the best artists and writers are their own worst critics. The best works to grace an art museum or books to fill the classics must read shelves of a library were regarded by their makers as poorly written or produced garbage, but millions if not billions of human beings over the years can be convinced otherwise.
Art takes time, dedication, and a nice person touch and investment… something Blizz wasn’t allowed to have since Activision stomped out its soul and creative spark.
If there is one thing blizzard excels at is taking ideas from their peers and rivals to improve upon them.
These systems are no different than what’s already in mmos that exists today like rift and guild wars 2.
The “zone encroachment and border skirmishes” is and was the definitive trait of Rift and absolutely makes sense to implement in WoW.
GW2 has the “zone event progressing into a zone boss” system.
Implement something like a zone currency or war bond that unlock transmogs, mounts, ilkusions; and to make sure both factions have a definitive area in the zone that is player commerce and group gathering friendly And you would eventually have a system that works for every single expansion as well as being able to be reimplemented for older content to keep it current.
It is an absolute ton of work but you would be killing so many birds with the fewest amount of stones by being able to implement a system like this.
Another thing to add to season rotations IE zone content progression.
Relatively permanent content that increases playertime.
More functional and open cities for roleplayers.
Recycling of older assets and zones to further develop on plotlines.
Salvaging the old warfront content potentially through instanced “Escalations” Of each zone like they do with darkshore and arathi, either for fresh PVP content or Siren Isle “storm” style story climaxes.
Reasons to add more delves to the world, which blizzard seems to be all in on and i’m all for it.
A gradual cessation of story and narrative power creep.
They wouldn’t even have to pitch it as cataclysm 2.0.
Just slowly rework zones over time to meet this battlefield standard and you can keep the faction war going as well as the narrative.
I don’t think that’s true anymore. Or if it is, it only applies to new IPs (which has been a while). Blizzard’s entire library is languishing atm—Diablo, Overwatch, Starcraft in particular.
I played GW2 a bit at launch and wished WoW would have adopted that event system. I think they sort of tried to with the Bonus Objectives thing, but didn’t bother iterating or evolving it beyond a very crude version. Warcraft certainly needs a from the ground up overhaul. If any of this (or something like it) were to happen, I’m guessing it would fold into world revamp expansions. So, fingers crossed, The Last Titan could be the point of embarkation. It is nice to dream, at least.
I can certainly agree on overwatch and starcraft, since blizzard has no idea how to pull their heads out of their own backsides on that.
They really need to boot back up heroes of the storm, too.
Rumble is a success even if it’s a micro transaction hellhole.
Hearthstone has been healthy basically since its release.
As someone who plays a lot of arpgs, Wizard has effectively saved diablo IV through the paragon system implementation. I dare say the game is actually fun again, So fun I actually completed season of witchcrafts reward tier and i’m on the final two chapters of the season’s progress.
Blizzard absolutely has the manpower and the resources to do small zone overhauls of the old world, I’ve seen that alone just from the art assets in d4.
I just don’t think they had the talent cultivated until kotick got removed.
I will say in terms of story and darker tone, D4 nailed it. Not played the expansion, so won’t comment there. As for WoW, I suspect that Player Housing content is going to dovetail nicely into revamps. If/When we end up back in Kalimdor and EK, maybe that will see more “cold war” friction creeping back into the picture.
I think ending the faction conflict was a brilliant idea, the best idea, a supremely amazingly awesome idea.
No I don’t think that, shut the front door, the faction conflict was the best thing WoW had going and the game has suffered from losing it.
No, why don’t you shut the front door, I do not think this at all, I hate the faction conflict and it was simply the worst. Alliance bias, Horde bias!!!
OMFG SHUT THE FRONT DOOR AND THE BACK ONE TOO, blood elves were the best worst idea, the faction conflict was great and I am just salty because of the city I lost for the reason I lost it. Also Sylvanas.
Will both of me just freaking stop it already!!! Nobody cares!!!
Another faction war thread this week? We’re eating good.
Like I said in the prior one, the playerbase flat out can’t handle faction conflict. The negativity it generates is detrimental to the game, and people are incapable of being objective. It also poisons any character that becomes involved with it to even a marginal extent, in either direction.
Cold war faction conflict is the way to go, and they might end up getting back to that. But as it stands now not only does it not make much sense, but the playerbase is much less objective than they were in the Wrath days. Cold war will result in either people shrieking that someone has committed an act of war for even a proportionate aggression, or that they’re Alliance/Horde lovers because they’re respectful to the other faction.
People raged at Tyrande saying mean words to them, and Nathanos being snarky, actually openly hostile words would make them explode into rage confetti.
I believe I solve this in both of my posts. The big issue is the cult of personality around main characters in a story that doesn’t need to be centered around main characters. Zone characters are more than capable of covering side content while the Gang keeps to the primary story narrative.
Edit: Another thing for deep consideration: Zone characters can be disposable. If a season changed and a setting is pending an ultimatum in the conflict, characters can be sacrificed to artificially enflame the faction war and keep tensions high while maintaining a sense of loss WITHOUT sacrificing the ‘Hero Units’ of the storyline.
Boy im starting to wish they implemented this in Vanilla. Imagine all the Horde leaders that could be spared, and how genuine some leadership losses could feel.
Devs: “Player, we live in a world that has stories, and those stories have to be played through by players of both factions. Who’s gonna be on the losing side? You?? Or you, Field Marshall Xxarrthasxx??”
Devs: “We writers have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Teldrassil and you curse Sylvanas. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. BfA’s story, while terrible, probably saved WoW. And my writing, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves Warcraft!!”
Devs: “You don’t want the faction conflict, because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me writing Shadowlands. You need me writing Shadowlands.”
Devs: “We use words like ‘faction’, ‘titans’, ‘Fractals’. We use these words as the backbone of our writing to create something!! You use them as a punchline!!!”
Devs: “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a player who raids and pvps under the very blanket of the story I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide that story!!! I would rather you just said ‘thank you for removing the faction conflict’ and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up your weapons and join a BG!! Either way, I don’t give a darn what you think you’re entitled to!!”
and what do you propose we do?
stagnate in a never ending war where no side can ever win or else half the fanbase will riot?
There is no “right way” to do it when it would literally just be a stalemate, no side can actually win against the other. Never once in this game’s 20 years has it been one side win.
It was always “skirmish while everyone deals with big bad”
TBC, fighting demons and stuff while skirmishing.
Wrath: fighting Lich King while skirmishing
Cata: fighting a giant dragon while skirmishing
Pandaria: everyone except loyalists turned against Garrosh while skirmishing.
WoD: invading another planet while skirmishing
Legion: fighting the demons while somewhat skirmishing
BFA: War because Sylvanas is a B, even that takes a backburner after the campaign and she leaves.
and so on and so forth.
See?
Never once has any side ever actually won, it has ALWAYS been skirmishing while dealing with a big bad. If you honestly think faction war is different than what we have now, it really wasn’t.
We just aren’t USELESSLY fighting each other now in skirmishes.
What’s with this comparison? Yeah, Tyrande was insulting and threatening to Horde players in Val’sharah. The difference is though, we had to quest with her, and couldn’t snap back at her like Alliance players could with Vol’jin at the end of MoP.
The Lich King shows up to taunt you all the tine during Wrath questing. No one complains about that. He’s a villain, not someone on the opposite faction abusing us and demanding our help.
Some people love him for that, and for the people who don’t it’s again cause he’s the one ordering us around treating us like garbage.
Enemies taunting you=fine
Your own questgivers doing it, especially when you can’t say anythung about it and they’re much nicer to the other side=not fine.
In a faction war expac, you really shouldn’t be questing with the opposite side too much anyway, but Blizzard dropped the ball on that, at least for Horde! They made us attack one of Jaina’s ethnic cleansing victims. No Alliance equivalent.
I think back on my first play through of BfA. When Garona said : “Get bent!” I thought that was hilarious. It was so Garona.
Then I read on the forums people were complaining about her being rude to them.
I guess people have different senses of humor.
Does the Alliance have people like Nathanos and Garona who are rude to them? Tyrande is rude to Horde Players but not really to fellow Alliance.
I remember that Gnome who takes all the credit for everything in Mechagon was annoying… Overspark… but he wasn’t exactly telling Alliance Players to “get bent” as far as I recall.
All I know is that snarky Nathanos was probably the best thing about BfA’s world questing. I did not care that he was rude to my character, because his rudeness was amusing and clearly came from a place of jealousy.