After World of Warcraft Classic: Wrath of the Lich King comes out, what would you like to see the World Warcraft Classic team do next?
One of two things. Either do TBC SoM, or create a new expansion that continues directly after WotLK, but avoids Cataclysm like it never happened. Have the game retain its classic feel and avoid all the changes that led to the game looking like it does currently in retail.
10 New Dungeons - Blackrock Caverns, Throne of the Tides, Vortex Pinnacle, Stonecore, Lost City of the Tol’vir, Halls of Origination, Grim Batol, End Time, Well of Eternity, Hour of Twilight.
The dungeons in Cataclysm were actually decent. I really don’t have anything negative to say about them. The original difficulty of Heroics was refreshing.
2 New Playable Races - Introduced two new playable races: Goblins and Worgens.
I have no issue with these new races existing. I never ended up playing them though because by this point in the game’s history I was through with making new characters.
5 New Raids - Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, Throne of the Four Winds, Firelands, Dragon Soul
Although the boss encounters, for the most part, were well made, Cataclysm had a serious lack of raiding content. These 5 new raids (6 counting Baradin Hold) were just not up to par with the standards set by previous content. In Vanilla WoW, there were a total of 60 bosses across all available raids (not including UBRS). In TBC, there were a total of 49 bosses. In WotLK, there are 52 bosses total (not considering multiple versions of the same raid). Cataclysm offered a pitiful 28. It was as if Cataclysm was missing two entire tiers of raid content.
7 New Zones - Mount Hyjal, Vashj’ir, Deepholm, Uldum, Twilight Highlands, Tol Barad, Molten Front.
The only new zone I took issue with was Tol Barad. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about any of the other new zones, but nothing that left me with fond memories either. At most I can say that Vashj’ir was interesting in a way that was new to the game.
Account Wide Mounts and Pets - Mounts and Pets available to all new player characters within the same account.
I had been asking for this personally. Before this, getting certain achievements was a bit more frustrating than I think was intended.
Archaeology Secondary Profession - Archaeology focuses on locating, piecing together, and appraising artifacts.
This was an okay time sink. The profession itself wasn’t terribly interesting, but it was a nice way to earn novelty items.
Changes to Player versus Player Arenas - For example: removal of the 5v5 Arena format.
I never did much 5v5 in arena, so this personally did not affect me, but I can’t imagine it’s ever a good idea for a game to lose features.
Changes to Professions - For example: removing specializations in leatherworking, blacksmithing, and tailoring.
It’s tough to be too upset about this, because they never made profession specs as impactful as they deserved to be. It’s just a shame.
Class Design Changes - Modifications to class abilities, mechanics, etc.
What stands out in my memory is that they took it even a step further than they did in WotLK and focused on making each class less unique and less of a necessity to the raid’s comp. This is always a mistake. A step backwards towards the way TBC raids were composed would make raiding more interesting and challenging.
Collections User Interface - An interface used to track cosmetic items, mounts, pets, etc.
This was basically required with the amount of novelty items that were in the game by this point.
Dungeon Journal - Learn more about dungeons, specifically the boss encounters.
This basically just saved people from having to go to youtube or wowhead for info. Pretty minor feature. Not even really worth discussing.
Guild Advancement System - Guild Leveling, achievements and rewards.
I liked this idea, but it had some problems in practice. Although it was fun to trollishly summon your raid deep into the fatigue area off the map, I think the mass summon was overall a determent to the game. Guild rep also made kicking people from the guild, as a joke, a little too harsh.
Level Cap Increase - Maximum level increased to level 85.
grinding xp has and always will be my least favorite part of WoW. I absolutely dread the idea of having to level my toons again every time an expansion comes out. There’s only two reasons they do it. It’s because it’s a way to force players to go to the new zones. Instead of making the zones with cool incentives to draw the players in, they instead make the only incentive to be necessary quest XP.
The other reason they make us level up with every new expansion is because, with each new level up, our stats decrease. This is how they deal with stat inflation. The solution would be to stop making gear increase in power so drastically from one tier to the next. There’s no reason why someone’s Crit Rating needs to go from 15% to 60% over the course of 3 tiers. If they hit the brakes on the stat inflation, then we wouldn’t have to level up so much with every expansion.
Minor Quality of Life Changes - For example: AoE looting, improved flight paths, Spell alerts for procs, ammunition no longer taking bag space etc.
these were all good and acceptable changes.
Questing and Leveling Changes - Progression and leveling changes as a result of the environmental in-game updates
Basically, what they’re referring to is how the topography of Azeroth was changed. This was a bad move. Nobody was like, “I’m tired of Azeroth, change it!” I wouldn’t be surprised if all that was part of the reason why raiding content was so obviously ignored. They spent all their time and resources on the wrong part of the game.
Raid Finder - Sign up for a raid and choose your role (healer, tank, or DPS)
This was one of my least favorite things they ever added to the game. What made it such a big slap in the face when it was released is that we were all starved for content, and then instead of anything new, they just gave us the same bosses but stupidly easy versions of them.
The hard truth is that the sense of accomplishment for killing the final boss of a raid is severely diminished when you’ve already done it on easy mode. In Vanilla and TBC, just walking into the final boss’ room for the first time felt epic, but when you did it in LFR, it was basically just yawn. It also feels WAY less rewarding to get a new piece of loot that is the same basic piece you already have, except it’s just a different color or shade. LFR really worked to cheapen the epicness of the regular difficulty raids.
Rated Battleground System - Premade battleground teams compete, where personal and team rankings are at stake.
I truly enjoyed this and wish they would have implemented it sooner.
Reforging - Allows conversion of an item’s secondary stat into another secondary stat.
This was a mistake. Loot used to be coveted and important. Reforging made it WAY too easy to get non-ideal loot and make it closer to BiS, thus reducing the impactful feeling of getting BiS items.
Talent System changes - Streamlined 31 point Talent trees.
Basically no effectual difference apart from the removal of the feeling that you’re being creative.
Tol Barad - Outdoor PvP raid zone where players battle for control of the island.
Basically another botched attempt by Blizzard to try and figure out what world PvP is, only this time Tol Barad had even less potential than Wintergrasp.
Transmogrification - Ability to replace the appearance of your weapons & armor with other items.
Allowed players to wear the old gear that reminds them of when the game used to be good, while also making it very difficult to tell how geared an enemy player is before fighting them.
Unified Raid Loot and Lockouts - 10 and 25-player raids share the same lockout timer and distribute the same items.
Yet another move to make loot more accessible, and therefore, less valuable. In Cata, the game was very quickly losing the drive/motivation for players to improve or play more. Instead of tempting players to play more and more, they offered players easy payouts so that they have to play less and less. Doesn’t seem like a good business strategy for a service that wants you to continue to pay monthly.
