So this hit me outta nowhere.
We know that a lot of studios prefer to ‘remake’ successful games rather than take a gamble on new stories and characters, but what about juggernauts like WoW? They’ve been going for 20 years, and there’s even more time in the original RTS games, table-top version, novels, comics, etc.
So if we did get the chance to do it all over again, I think I’d let it go like this.
1) You are Nobody
The joys of being just an average Orc!
Now, this might sound odd at first glance, but one of the problems with WoW’s story is that we’re these huge big-name Lore-Character Heroes in universe, but when every adventurer is one of those, nobody is special.
Rather that being innately tied to our Mega-Factions, this is, as Vanilla laid out, an era where the Horde and Alliance are struggling to get their footing again, rebuild their lands, hash out their borders and deal with new and old threats alike clawing their way out of the dark corners of the world. You start off as just a mercenary, an adventurer, somebody out for coin, glory and the safety of what matters to you, and you stay there.
Certainly, as you grow stronger, carry the fight and push for what you believe in, you’ll be courted by the Powers of the World, but that shouldn’t just be your Race and Mega-Faction. Dark powers see your potential, the carnage in your wake, the wealth you have gathered and the ambition in your heart and move to make overtures to gain your allegiance. Your rivals, both along racial lines and personal feuds, scheme to take your successes, either to claim as their own, or to challenge and prove themselves your better. Forces for Good, for change, might see you as a potential standard-bearer for their message, and mission, to heal a world ravaged over and over again by Gods and Demons and Dragons and Warlords.
While it would certainly take an effort, you could step up as an ambassador, eschewing the upper tiers of reputation with your nominal Mega-Faction to openly work alongside their Rival Mega-Faction, or double down on old hatreds and factional pride and be the nightmare the soldiers on the other side whisper about around their camp-fires in the darkest, coldest parts of the night.
Your Class matters as much as your choices, but it is your choices that alter how the World of Azeroth perceives you. Dialogue options and certain quests have multiple choices that might give you the option for mercy, or more treasure, or a favor down the road. You might choose to only deal non-lethal damage, or double-down on the slaughter, when it comes to PvP or against Humanoid/Sapient/Sentient Targets. Your charity or your greed, your compassion or your spite, matters as much as any blood-soaked battlefield you walk away from, and that is how you set yourself apart from the rest of the Mercenaries, Adventurers and ‘Champions’ of Azeroth.
2) The world is broken
You want me to go where and do WHAT?
There are parts of Azeroth where no sane person goes without being heavily armed and with significant backup.
Travel across the Barrens is treacherous as you must make it to each watering hole to survive the trek, and bandits, centaurs, monsters and rival caravan groups all know it. The Duskwood is haunted by feral Worgen, mindless Undead, gigantic Spiders and haunted Ogres, and Stormwind is both distracted by other threats and ambivalent about assistance, as the region offers little resources or tactical advantage. The Felwood is haunted by Demons and monstrous abominations spawned by the Fel magic that taints the land and the water, and lands around Blackrock Mountain are infested with Black Dragon spawn, the Dark Horde’s mongrel, depraved forces, rogue Fire elementals and Dark Iron Dwarves scheming against their Ironforge kin.
The Plaguelands are a nightmare where even the water, the air, the very ground itself teems with necrotic unlife, threatening to send even the most wary and canny adventurer into the thrall of the Scourge and the damnation of Undeath. Silithus roils as insectile horrors roam the sands both above and below the surface, and deranged cultists of the Twilight Hammer pray day and night before profane altars to raise their sanity-shattering Gods into the waking world once more.
Titanic facilities, half-buried and malfunctioning from an age of misadventure and no maintenance, hum to erratic life as arcaneo-tech servants begin to operate on corrupted commands and mis-interpreted orders. The Troll Tribes thunder on their drums and fill the air with war-horns and battle-cries as they see the first chance in ten thousand years to reclaim the lands that are rightfully theirs, while in the shadows, Demon Cults, Scourge Cults, the agents of Deathwing, the Noble Court of Stormwind, the Defias gang, the Stromgarde criminal ‘empire’, the Ravenholdt Assassin League, the Burning Blade remnants, the Satyrs, the Naga and so many others turn their attention to fomenting conflict, paranoia, mistrust and treason to serve their own ends and avenge old defeats and setbacks.
Characters need food and water, they need shelter and supplies. Ammunition and magical reagents are needed to use ranged weapons or cast potent spells. Certain weapon types will work better against certain enemies or be less effective against others. Elemental damage against certain enemies, like using Fire on Fire Elementals or Void on Old God minions, will be less effective, meaning that items that can do different types of elemental damage for spellcasters is a necessity, either to change the ‘type’ of damage a spell does, or to act as a stop-gap for when a spellcaster might otherwise only have a single form of Elemental damage magic to use. Using a magical item to replace a spell that might not be as effective should be a viable and useful strategy, but magic items hold charges, and every charge requires either time, resources or specific locations to replenish, and if you run short in the middle of a fight, you’re not only vulnerable, but you might make your allies vulnerable too as they rush to try and protect you.
And when I say supplies, I mean supplies. You need food for your mounts, barding, water and shelter. Armor and weapons will degrade with use and you will need more of what they are made of to repair them, or pay significantly more at the repairer. Magical items, be they armor, rings, wands or weapons, all require even more specialised reagents to repair, and more importantly, to recharge.
The ability to find safe ground to make camp and rest, to enter a ‘resting state’ for two or three minutes while your can ‘sleep’, ‘eat’, ‘repair/recharge’ and be fresh and ready to take on the world again is also vitally important, but even with a good supply of resources, safe areas to rest and recover, and strong allies to watch your back, inevitably you must return to civilisation to properly care for yourself, your mount and your equipment, as even the best do-it-yourself care will falter in the end without the stability of a settlement to assist you.
Environmental factors are also a thing. Heat and cold can increase the amount of water and food you might need to consume, rain can soak you, make you ill, spoil supplies and make it harder to move faster or keep an eye on tracks. Intense heat can sap your water and leave you dizzy, dehydrated and delusional from heat-stroke and mirages, and in some situations, actually set fire to you and your equipment, especially around lava or similar terrain. Water needs to be boiled to remove parasites, disease and pollutants, and not all food and shelter you find out in the unclaimed lands is fit for Humanoid consumption. Parasites can be found in the meat of beasts and the flesh of plants alike, and shelter attracts all things, even predators and vermin who may see you as a challenger, a threat to their young, or a tasty meal that walked right into their lair.
The Razor-Winds that Thrall mentioned in Warcraft III, elemental fire-storms scouring the lands around the Blackrock Mountain, clouds of diseased mosquitoes and biting flies in the Swamp of Sorrows and the Stranglethorn Jungle, unnaturally cold storms that sweep down from Northrend’s most uninhabitable areas, from Winterspring and other regions locked in snow-and-ice all year long, droughts that might dry up water supplies and make it harder to find food, water and prey as beasts move on and plants die off. Thunderstorms might force Players to stay on the ground rather than fly for fear of being struck by lightning and, if not killed outright, be paralyzed and fall from the sky and possible be turned into a crater for their hubris, wild-fires caused by lightning strikes, accidents caused be people or the collateral damage of a duel between two Wizards who only care about defeating each other, not the walls of uncontrolled arcane fire rushing out from the site of their conflict and threatening farm and forest alike.
There are parts of Azeroth where to even think about going into them without supplies and a bug-out plan should be suicide. The Plaguelands, Silithus, Blackrock Mountain and its surrounding regions, the Blasted Lands, the Felwood, all of these should be the stuff of nightmares to players, places where the Darker powers of the setting haven’t just appeared, they’ve dug in and fortified, and the whole region is under their control and bends to serve their design. In those regions, and those like them, you are not merely facing their most powerful and devoted followers, the very land itself is turned against you and strives to wear you down and leave you broken and vulnerable in turn.
3) Dragons should make all pants soulbound when they show up
There is always a bigger fish!
Something that irks me is that a Dragon shows up, and everyone is like "…Bet." and just run towards the house-sized creature that can breathe fire, has more magic than the average Mage, has supernatural abilities out the whazoo, scales that are resistant to elemental damage and are often superior to plate-armor, and natural weapons that can penetrate even Mithril armor, and slice, puncture or crush simple iron or steel.
No. No. You have something that big and that lethal show up, it should not feel to the Adventurers like “… Oh. Must be a Tuesday.” A Dragon shows up and the players should feel their bowels clench with fear. A warband of Demons is a cataclysmic threat to the local area and runs the risk of becoming an even bigger incursion of the Burning Legion if they aren’t dealt with now, but they also are stupidly powerful, magically gifted and all but the most lowly or pathetic will be carrying enchanted gear and weapons that might be terribly cursed to a Mortal, but only make the Demons who carry them even more lethal to face.
An Old God minion like a N’Raqi or a Faceless One shows up and the local population should lose their minds as the aura of madness and Void that emanates from just one of these things starts to gnaw at the corners of their mind and inflame the worst aspects of their personalities. A C’Thraxxi is a continental threat to all people and probably would warrant Alliance, Horde and even other factions putting aside their issues to unite to put this horror back into the ground. Titanic Watchers, powerful Loa and Wild Gods are the kind of things that spawn new religions and can reshape the local terrain and ecosystem in unnatural and bizarre ways, and wield magic on a scale unimaginable to the average person, and the average Adventurer has it worse, because they can imagine it, and they should know they’re going to fall well short of that bar without significant backup.
A region under the control of a Dragon Flight or even just a group of Dragons, even young Drakes with an adult or two nearby to keep order should be the kind of thing that makes the nearby regions lay awake at night, wrestling with fear and anxiety.
A Titanic facility might attract all kind of attention, from looters seeking to lay claim to that all-too-rare and absurdly-valuable arcaneo-tech that the Titans use, and is so much more efficient than the Steam-Punk/Bio-Punk/Diesel-Punk used by the Gnomes and Dwarves, Forsaken and Goblins, respectively, to scholars trying to understand who and what left these imposing and valuable ruins behind, to Mystery Cults dedicated to the Titan Watchers and the Titans themselves, who seek to interpret the will of these ‘Makers’ and project it onto this chaotic, uncontrollable world.
When something big, something obviously supernatural and over-saturated with magic shows up, the Players should not think ‘Oh yay, free loot!’, they should be desperately checking their equipment and supplies and trying to figure out if they should duck and run, or rally with the other adventurers and try to fight, either to give the civilians a chance to run, or to try and stop this threat before it can get stronger.
And there’s also the issue that many of these threats have agendas, and plans of their own. A Dragon might be willing to negotiate, Blacks and ‘Rogue’ Dragons aside, and provide services such as advice, military aid or even just trade so long as their territory is left alone and they are given the respect they feel they deserve, which might be a running battle all on its own given how inflated some Dragon egoes get.
A Titan Watcher or Keeper, or even just the designated leader of a Titan Facility, might be willing to work with Mortals to repair their facility, make contact with other facilities, or even see these Mystery Cults and Scholars as potential allies and agents of the Titan Pantheon’s vision for Azeroth … with the right controls in place, of course.
Demons, both of the Burning Legion and ‘free’ Demons alike, have always had a place for Cults, and they’re not stupid. They might come back over and over again, but there are ways to kill them off semi-permanently, they can be sealed up and locked away, they can be bound and enslaved by Warlocks and other users of the Fel if they misjudge the strength of the Mortals before them, and they will get tortured excruciatingly by the Legion if they are slain and their spirits are sent back to the Twisting Nether.
When something that powerful shows up, the players’ first thought should not be ‘Loot it’. Can it be talked down, could it even be defeated with the forces we have right now, does it have a reason to come at us, and do we share an agenda here?. The World is broken, the lands are scarred, violence should not always be the default when there’s a chance for some parties to gain through dialogue and exchange rather than just overwhelming aggression.
4) More than just my Race!
I will die mad and salty on this hill until the heat death of the universe or the cancer takes me, whichever comes first!
Kaldorei should have been a neutral race who could side with either the Horde or the Alliance, as should the Forsaken, as both of their goals are only tangentially aligned with the agendas of the Alliance and the Horde, and it should have been the outcasts, the dreamers and the seekers of their people seeking new allies and new options, rather than the whole race moving in lock-step with awkward and often contrary allies because their leaders said so, or caught a case of the itchy crotch with the other Faction Leadership.
Draenei and Sin’dorei shouldn’t have been Alliance and Horde specific. The Quel’dorei could have split with those who turned to the Fel to try to survive siding with the Horde as much to keep the Forsaken out of their lands as to gain insight from the Orcs on how to deal with Fel addiction, becoming the Sin’dorei, while those who refused to take the ‘survival at any cost’ route, and balking at Prince Kael’thas’s bargains, chose to throw themselves on the Alliance’s mercy, sating their arcane addition with the help of Human and Gnomish mages and access to the leylines within Alliance territory, creating a bitter struggle as both Horde and Alliance lay claim to Quel’thalas and the Elves clash bitterly, their once-proud lands and people now just another toy to be snatched back and forth between squabbling ‘lesser races’ brawling for dominance.
The Draenei might not have trusted the Orcs, but the Prophet did have visions of a combined army fighting the Legion, and the Kaldorei did kind of go 
at the sight of ‘Eredar’, and I could see that being how the Alliance sees the Draenei, at least at first, another Legion ploy to lower their guard, while the Orcs are literally falling over each other trying to make things right and knowing full well that nothing can make it so. The Draenei also need supplies, resources and allies to get their Dimensional Ship operational again, and even moreso, having allies, and eyes, within the Alliance and Horde makes it easier to bring them along as the Army of Light that the Prophet spoke of, and to guide the other races away from the embrace of the Void, and the Fel, before another genocide takes place.
Goblins should have been multi-faction and Gallywix should have been sent packing as a recurrinh villain and not the Horde’s defacto Goblin Champion.
The story of the Worgen should have been one of desperate alliances and dangerous choices, with the rivalry and bitterness between Genn and Crowley driving them apart, with those who see Genn as their rightful King following him no matter what and hoping he can bring them back to the table with the Alliance as equals, and those who blame Genn for the Worgen curse and cutting them off from their old allies following Crowley into a reckless alliance of convenience with the Horde to eventually retake Gilneas for the people. Rather than the Horde invasion being what toppled the nation, having the Forsaken start invading, and then having Old God minions bursting up from the ground and sending Forsaken, Worgen and Gilneans alike scrambling for cover.
Shal’dorei I again would rather have seen join both Mega-Factions even as I will fite E’RYBODY before I give up on Lor’themarXThalyssra, given that both the Horde and the Alliance aided them, and regardless of how hostile Tyrande was towards them, having Shal’dorei free to leave Suramar and decide their own destiny after 10,000 years of confinement and bitter social intrigues ruling their lives?
I don’t know if the Lightforged Draenei make sense as an Allied Race for both sides, but I could easily see them becoming a new skin for the Draenei, much like how the Eredar/Manari skins worked out. Ren’dorei we don’t need because we get Quel’dorei for the Alliance. Highmountain Tauren certainly make sense as a Neutral Race as while they have close ties to the Tauren, many would see Sylvanas and her actions as inherently opposed to the Earth Mother’s teachings and side with the Alliance instead, and find kinship with the Wildhammer Dwarves and the more rural Humans within the Alliance.
Kul’tiran Humans works for both Mega-Factions as we’ve had Pirates working with the Horde during the Battle for Azeroth, and Zandalari? That might be a bit of a stretch, but the Vol’dun Zandalari Trolls might spit on Princess Talanjii’s offers of reunification, restitution and the offer of returning ‘home’, siding with the Alliance out of spite and fleeing Zandalar to avoid retaliation from the new Queen. Vulpera are wanderers and vagabonds at heart, and might choose either Mega-Faction out of personal preference or bias.
As I mentioned earlier, it should be possible to achieve Friendly, even Honored, status even with your opposing Mega-Faction, but it is a tenuous balance. As the Horde and Alliance squabble over borders, resources, even the right to exist, your ability to straddle the line as an ambassador or a mercenary-for-hire also becomes a liability, as siding with one will drastically offend, or even enrage, the other. In times of open conflict, you might not even be able to go into those Cities or Towns because the Guards will just see your Race and attack on sight because, you know, WAR, but that same straddling of the line might allow you to step in and arrange peaceful talks, or at the very least, be able to act as a go-between for messages and prisoner exchanges as you’ve proven to be both honorable and willing to work well with even nominal enemies.
But what are your thoughts?