There is hardly any space for actual rpg elements in WoW right now.
Leveling is just the tutorial of the game since the actual content and balance only happens at max lvl.
Gear progression is nice but it should really be a side dish not the main attraction and without relevant crafting sets and/or world drops it feels more like a moba than a rpg.
One thing we still have and has a lot of room to grow is character customization in the form of cosmetic and collectables and maybe its time for the player to actually have some choices.
During bfa I really enjoying being able to collect and choose my mech panther color it was simple but fun.
I’m also surprise by how much fun I’m having trying to get all options for my Dredge butler so I can make him just the way I want.
With those things in mind I really think blizzard should allow players to color their gear however they like ( even if they feel that some color should be lock behind high end content ) give players Tattoo and Piercing options that are not race exclusive, you could even make it require you to be exalted with said race so their barber is willing to help you out, kind like a heritage armor.
its past time for a permanently Player Property.
I enjoy MoP Farm and WoD Garrison a lot and really think those should be improved instead of abandoned.
I also love the thousand needles quest that gives you a boat to sum ( maybe I’m alone in this but I spend quite a lot time when it was first introduced doing nothing but sailing ) I would farm every profession mats if I could have a boat at the end ( even if its only usable in big open water or something ).
Little things like being able to “dress” the armor stand in your order hall or how Kael is in the venthyr covenant if you have defeated him in the raid or how you stop the anime flow in revendreth this are all nice touches that make you feel like you exist in this world and you can affect it.
Blizzard in one way or another has try a lot concepts that allow players to own property and change the world around it while I know garrison had a lot backlash I believe most of it was because of the overall xpac and not the garrison itself and even the ones that were about the garrison is not against the concept just the execution.
Now is the perfect time to revisit those ideas and this time do something we can continue to build from one xpac to the next, start with small cottage and try somethings out, if it works you keep expanding.
WoW needs more content that is not linked to a specific xpac and flows independently from them reflecting all the years our characters have existed in that world.
Sorry breh they have gone full diablo on this one. A couple of corny cinematics between Sylvanas and Anduin is all you are going to get.
I have been thinking about it alot. Blizzard has never been known for good rpgs. The only reason we got it initially in 2004 with WoW is they took people from other mmorpgs to help make WoW.
That has eroded over the years though and the game has gone back to the way they like to design games like this. Random loot grinds on many different difficulty levels.
Good for the diablo fans, not so good for the Baldurs Gates types like us.
A lot of the stuff you talk about has nothing to do with role-playing, it’s all cosmetic stuff. I’d like some true role-playing like being able to really affect the story line and make our own stories rather than blindly following the highly-linear and confusing one Blizzard has created.
I have heard this “RPG elements” stuff before, but it’s such a nebulous thing that it doesn’t actually mean anything; because there are so many different RPGs that are nothing like each other, yet are still RPGs, that a blanket statement like that is meaningless.
I understand your feeling and maybe you are right but I feel like they have tried different things in the past and I still believe that if enough players were to rise with a cohesive voice we could see changes even if small in the direction we want.
being able to customize your character to your liking is in the core of every rpg.
Being a MMO I don’t expect this kind change if I’m being honest, but I don’t disagree this is also at the heart of rpg I just don’t think a mmo can provide this kind of choices
A lot of those types of games have less content, unless you play through over and over and choose the other paths. Most RPGs give the appearance of choice, but the same outcome.
I personally don’t like things like order halls from legion, because I tend to play only a couple characters, making the content I get to experience less.
Sure it can. Have an over-arching story line where events are too large for the players to change much but also have smaller elements of the world which are run by players. Small towns, cities, shops, political divisions which players can own and run. A mostly player-run economy with meaningful crafting. Player-generated events such as bounties, caravans, wars. The ideas go on and on.
Many of these elements have been used in MMOs and there’s still plenty of room to innovate. We don’t need to have completely-static story lines where we’re the champion and we proceed through it on-the-rails.
I do not want a choose-your-own-adventure game. That’s not an RPG, that’s just a branching static storyline. I want true player-generated choices and content, more of a sandbox game than an action-adventure one.
the first step toward this would be give players property, what you talking about is the final step and would require a massive amount of time to implement in a game like WoW but I think in the core it start with some of the things I talked about but just with a lot more big scales changes
Looks at the BE DH You can’t have my soul, I’m using it
That’s certainly a good start but they did that once and completely botched it with garrisons. The property should not be instanced, it should be a plot of land that other people can walk around and visit. Something real and out in the world.
Let people form villages, towns, cities, own shops, form governments, and so on.
Never gonna happen,they would have to create an entire new game to be able to do that. Look at the barrens for instance,pretty much every square yard has something related to questing.
plots wouldn’t work with currently WoW, phases and whatnot, but even with instances you could make it work by allowing players to come together and create a big instanced city, those city could even have their own LFG where anyone can join as if they were entering the city.
Plot of lands even FF14 is having a hard time with it, I think its pipe dream right now
WoW should have ended ages ago, it’s very creaky and full of bad ideas that popped up over the years and which have been abandoned. End the game and start something new with a better foundation, the time for that is now.
Players dont need property to do this, just wanted to point it out. Good or bad, GS is a prime example of players creating their own space in the game. There are other spots as well, and no they don’t have to be on RP servers. Take popular duel spots, for example.
I suppose that’s somewhat true. Your taking the role of a character, but there’s no real decision making that influences things.
In vanilla you could destroy your reputation on server or npc reps(like booty Bay/pirates). And on PvP servers, factions would war over controlling zones for a while. But that’s stretching a bit.
WoW is an action game. It always has been. It’s core features are cooperative multiplayer Raid and Dungeons and Competitive Multiplayer Battlegrounds and Arena. The questing system is just there to give players something to do in-between those other activities. The RPG-esque Leveling system is the only hold over to another time where players were given the sense of “progression” but in the grand scheme of things it hasn’t been a meaningful player experience since the classic days as nearly every player tries to grind through this phase to get to the “true” game play at “end game”.
