An idea for the direction of classic

Give the community a set of dev tools to create content…

Have a QA team assigned to test submitted content.

All approved content is tested by the community on the PTR and can be rated/voted into the game, using whatever criteria the Devs feel is acceptable.

Use a loot pool system to handle items, based on the content level/difficulty. i.e. characters can gain tokens or whatever to turn in for various loot.

Add the entrances to the new content at any number of barren locations in the world.

Incentivize the content creators with being immortalized in the game, be it naming a mob/boss/item after them.

This concept would require minimal investment by Blizzard, give the community new content to explore and be something completely fresh for the community that enjoys classic WoW (rather than rehashing the expansions again).

1 Like

once phase 6 is done then that will be it forever

5 Likes

There doesn’t need to be this overly complex continuation mechanic. We already know what’s next, we don’t need tools for it. Don’t worry TBC is very low cost so it won’t be a problem.

3 Likes

I think the best idea is ultimately custom servers.

The idea is that you can host any kind of server, with any kind of rules, on your own server.

People that like your map can “subscribe” to it. With enough subscribers certain perks become available, like free hosting from Blizz (ie. at 10,000 subscribers). You’d simply choose from list of servers, that would all be hosted by Blizz.

People can subscribe to your map even when it’s still in development, so if you get enough subs before you launch your server you could host it without ever paying a dime.

So why custom servers, then?

Well, as you all know, we all have different ideas for design direction for Classic. There’s no way we and Blizzard can agree to a direction that pleases everyone.

If Blizzard would design new content for Classic, they would once again do only PvE content (since it’s their most popular type of content).

People who have wanted another epic BG like AV since Vanilla, and improvements to AV, or even world PvP, would be left in the dust once again. And even from PvE point of view, I think some people might be tired of the raid formula.

What if you want randomly generated content? Well too bad, only thing retail devs seem capable of doing these days is pumping out raids and calling it a day.

So many ideas on a project going nowhere.

6 Likes

hard no. Instead, they need to treat it like Jagex did with OSRS. BUT Blizz can NOT screw it up. of course thats a giant joke.

Really seems to be an idea straight out of the ‘I have no idea how things are done, but let’s just make up stuff’ guide to suggestions from players.

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The only control the community should have over content is the ability to vote with our wallets.

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Nope. Tbc. Then wotlk.

3 Likes

AN IDEA FOR THE DIRECTION OF CLASSIC

Yes!

  • The Burning Crusade Classic
  • The Wrath of the Lich King Classic
  • Cataclysm Classic
  • Mists of Pandaria Classic
  • Warlords of Draenor Classic
  • Legion Classic
  • Battle for Azeroth Classic

I would settle for WotLK first.

i honestly expected they’ll launch all of classic at once. I think they gave people a false sense of continuity by doing this staggered launch…and they’ll expect more stuff after P6.

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Their IP lawyer is on the floor laughing when asked if this is a good idea.

How bout classic without the content bring nerfed. Release game with old patches with some qol changes here in there. Add boss hp/dmg higher to make content more satisfying when you finally downed that boss.

Dev is short for development/developer. Tools are used to create things. This isn’t a concept that is new, a number of games over the years have had something similar.

You think that the content team are creating everything from scratch? They’re given assets to populate the various quests/dungeons/raids, at most, they do scripting with gasp you guessed it a tool set.

Nowadays, you could easily create a limited tool set for the community to select from a list of locations/objects/npcs/mobs/etc… to drop and drag into an development/testing application (which would be saved and submitted). Then add prompts for scripted encounters/dialogues/etc… (again, you limit the options to prevent shenanigans by the community, such as offensive language/naming).

At the end of the day, I have more faith in the fans then I do in the current Blizzard team. I don’t dislike TBC either, I would play it, but even then I don’t see much long term viability of rehashing the same content and well retail is not for me. I think a “Classic+” kind of thing would be refreshing, a new direction for a fan driven niche, by a fan driven niche.

Fixed it for you.

1 Like

I hope you’re right. :grin:

Going beyond Wrath into Cata (where the game fundamentally changed) would be just be silly.

Don’t try too hard to be witty, you may be responding to people who work with developers on a day to day basis.

Nowadays, you could easily create a limited tool set for the community to select from a list of locations/objects/npcs/mobs/etc… to drop and drag into a saved file.

Your idea of creating a limited tool set and those of a profit making business based on subs is different, I am 100 sure of that.

At the end of the day, I have more faith in the fans then I do in the current Blizzard team.

I don’t have a lot of faith in Blizzard developers, but I have more in them than I do a player base like this. These people think that a game is like making Hello World programs, instead of millions upon millions of lines of code that have been in development for 20 years.

I’m all for fans of games. The problem is, those fans aren’t in the business of running a for profit game. I don’t like many things Blizzard does, really. But I zero faith in a bunch of 20 somethings designing anything close to what people would think is a Blizzard product.

So your only real argument is profits… explain private servers vs offical servers. Profit is generated by supplying a demand that people are willing to pay for. People still play private servers, but official servers seemed to make quite a bit of profit once Blizzard jumped on that train.

Some people might play World of Waltercraft, but most people want official (for numerous reasons). So if a guy named Walter takes advantage of the tool kit to design a version of WoW that fans love, maybe Blizzard should be paying attention to why.

I’m speaking on officially sanctioned fan-made content, added to official servers. Hello profit, from not paying content creators. Also more content, means potentially more to do, means potentially more people playing longer, means potentially more subscription dollars.

Finally, yes… millions of lines of code are/were required, but that work has already been done, it is now an asset to be leveraged. It might take an animator 80 hours of work to model/rig/texture/animate a character, but how much work is required to reuse that asset over and over again? All the work has already been done, the assets exist, the tool kits exist (but might need to be adapted), potentially a testing/development application might need to be created… overall, it’s a pretty minimal investment by Blizzard for a potentially massive amount of free content… they would obviously need a QA/QC team go through it to maintain standards, but if done correctly, a lot of the nonsense submissions could be avoided.