Remove warmode, make every server pvp with characters flagged from the beginning.
Combine more low and medium pop servers to not only give more people to play with but to stabilize economy across servers. A Fathoms trinket on my server is 90k on Illidan it is 17k…
Bring back talent trees and item reforging.
Either remove Pathfinder requirements or remove flying completely.
Go back to original zones/dungeons level ranges.
Remove all rep requirements and gates for allied races. We paid $50 for an expansion and shouldn’t have gated content outside of new raids and storylines.
Remove LFR as well as Mythic raids and dungeons. Go back to 2 difficulty levels. Heroic can be tuned harder than current levels.
Remove lobby style queuing for dungeons and raids. I rarely leave the city for anything, the world aspect has been removed from the game for the sake of convenience.
Have a half price sub month. Each month you stay you can choose a free mount or pet from the store. That would just be to bring people back but there’s the obvious game play issues too.
Fixing the current expansion would be a start. They really need to develop a story that has the same draw as Arthas. Which might be impossible to do, not only did Arthas have Warcraft III going for him, it’s hard to develop a story that is meaningful for both new and old players. I doubt the new generation of gamers have even heard of Warcraft III, and I doubt they are all that interested in MMOs.
Blizzard needs to earn back the respect and rapport players used to have for them. They can do that by cutting out the micro transaction bull, and making payed content add meaningful aspects to the game, that aren’t simply cosmetic.
Poll existing and former players on things that have changed over the years to get an idea of what features were most enjoyable by the largest percentage of people and re-tailor the game in that direction.
I would play a whole lot less if I couldnt use dungeon finder or lfr. Its not worth the hassle of looking for chat to join a group and then also hoping they let you in with a low IO score. And I only queue tanks and heals so if you thought queues were to long now for dps imagine having to spam trade chat with annoying begging for team mates to join. Fyi I hate the peole spamming trade chat for these things, they can use dungeon finder, AH and guild recruiting tab for.
Contrary to what most believe, nothing specific has “ruined the game”, the truth is Warcraft is just a 14 year old game that is really showing its age and the reason most people stop playing it is because they’re bored with it. If you want to bring people back, you need what is basically a new game for them to play.
With VERY few exceptions, all video games get less popular as they age.
The question was “How can you increase sub numbers?” not “How can you get more subs without alienating anybody?”
And WoW2 will get more subs back than any patch could hope to get.
Instanced housing (but visitable by others with permission settings) with a new profession for crafting decorating items such as furniture, rugs, lamps, houseplants, aquariums, and pool tables–the sky’s the limit, if it’s in this world, it could be reimagined as possible deco for the finer Azeroth estate. Allow for a sizable area of land to go with a home so that gardens could be planted, fields could feature grazing sheep, perhaps a lake for fishing, all aspects that could be selected by the player to suit themselves. I could go on for pages and days about how marvelous player housing could be, for the game, for the players, and for the profits, but I’ll just leave it at this–it’s at the top of my list of all things wished for!
All your transmog are belong to us. If an item drops for you it can be either collected by you for transmog or mailed to an alt on your account to be worn and thus collected. I’m past exasperated with seeing wonderful items drop that are subsequently vendor fodder only. If I fight the fight, let me win the right to the appearances of any items looted. Or just take off BOP designations if the character exceeds the item’s equipping requirement by 10 or 11 levels. It’s obviously obsolete as real gear at that point. Allow anything from past expansions to be traded, sold, sent to alts.
Player created content, such as clothing designed by players. Let those with art skills go to work, open up boutiques with their fashion line for in-game gold. Hairstylists could dream up new cuts and looks offered in player owned salons. Tattoo artists might have studios with their designs ready to be inked where you so desire. I know it sounds complicated but I have seen player created content in other games. It makes sense in a way to crowd source some of the work of WoW to its avid fanbase now. And, yes, some of it might need to be monitored to keep hate symbols off some doofy foreheads, but imagine the flourishing of creativity!
More, more, more! Give us more inventory! I’m stuffed to the gills on most of my characters with things of sentimental value. Give us more hunter stable slots, my main hunter is going to have to part with some old friends soon if she wants any new companions. Give us more personal choices, such as alternate spell and attack animations, perhaps via the neglected glyph system. Give us far more class/race options because getting to have more reasons to roll another alt is more important to me than being a slave to the lore (there’s always a retcon somewhere to explain how a goblin managed to sneak into monk training.)
Give us (for the low, low price of a monthly subscription) hope for the future, respect for past patronage and a higher ratio of reward to effort in the present because mean-spirited RNG has turned us into the beaten pinatas of dead presidents instead of the mobs showering us with colorful candy and delectable loots. Give us another good bakers’ dozen years of great gaming fun. It might not be said often enough that I am deeply grateful to those who have poured their time, energy and love into making the game as incredibly fun as it is, which happens to include the many witty, warm and wonderful players I’ve met along the way. WoW is without compare in gaming history for me and I’ve played many compelling games, but none kept my attention and dreams of what-ifs as raptly as this one shared, persistent world. Thanks, y’all, for it all.
I will do the server mergers not just constant sharding all the time - I will hire 1 person to monitor the server population and status & manage the servers and do server mergers when they are needed. Open new servers if they are needed. Close new character creation for the popular servers from time to time if needed…etc…
= This will bring WOW community back and allow the players to treat each other more seriously and make friends as they progress in the game.
= no Lag caused by constant sharding
I will make flying available immediately after reaching the max level. Pathfinder can stay or not stay, it doesn’t matter but I will not time-gate it. Let’s face it. It’s a feature of the game that so many WOW players are so used to and I think it is something that once introduced that cannot go back without suffering some serious consequences. The wrong assumption the company is making is that people play 1 and only 1 character. The truth is they don’t. They play many alts.
I will make more things to do at max level. Something for everyone pretty much. Rewarding system for professions, rewarding system for collectors, the PvPers and the PvEers, rewarding system for gold farmers. Let’s face it. Everything is supply and demand so letting people farm gold for fun won’t disturb the game any more than now.
I will not introduce cash shop only items. If things are available in the cash shop then they should also be available in the game with some reasonable amount of work needed.
Well, I got some better ideas but for those, they will need to pay me first! then I will tell
A time machine is all that could get the subs back up. This genre is dying. Sure a few subs show up here and there; but these numbers are really going to continue dropping and nothing can be done for it.
I would take a long look at Talent trees again and bring them back. Let people have their choices back. If they aren’t “optimal” for a dungeon/Raid or PvP, then they still have the choice to become optimal/cookie cutter, or stay how they are. Sometimes in downtime, different is fun.
If we can’t get Talent Trees back, then at the very least, would revamp when we get talents. If it’s every 15, then after 90 would be 105 & 120. With 120 levels (and rising) players need some sort of accomplishment.
Bring back class flavor/diversity. Let the classes be different from each other. People want to play classes they like. Stop with the blanding down, eventually we’re going to be left with everyone being able to heal/tank/DPS no matter what pretty package was chosen at creation to house the clone. So I would go back to Wrath, Cata, MoP and return the fun and flavor aspects to the classes.
The last resort for any class/spec would be to nerf it. If it is dominating in its intended design, maybe other classes are too weak. I would rather buff a little than nerf. Nerfs should be reserved for mistakes made in coding/testing if something is truly that much out of whack. Anyone that cries on the forums for nerf to happen because someone else beat them on meters or in PvP, their account personally would receive a 7 day debuff where they would do 10% less healing or DPS and have a temp title applied, “Soandso Asked for a Nerf and Got It!” (Debuff timer would only tick down while logged in. )
Flying~ I would bring back gold purchase per character and also keep in Pathfinder. If you want to buy flying with gold on a couple toons, go for it. The toon that purchases with gold can fly. If/when you complete Pathfinder, it unlocks on the account for all current and future alts. Give players a choice. Some don’t have a lot of alts and don’t care about an account unlock, they just want their one & only (or 2) mains to be able to fly. Some don’t have all the time in the world to grind out PF, and want to spend their time in game doing something else. And some have an alt army that keeps their mains broke that would happily go the “free” route that would also help the future alts. Frustrating players only leads to losing their sub. Again, give players a choice.
Servers~ I would merge them all. There would be 4 shards to choose from similarly to how Warmode is selected now: WarMode, PVE, RPPvE, and RPWarmode. Names would not be affected because of the “server” it was created on (example: I can have an Iradi on Bronzebeard and Shandris. The game can tell who is who). Servers would really be nothing more than either a “last name” or street address for your character(s).
I’d scrap the current talent tree and make an entire new one with 50-100 talent points. I’d cut/paste the current talents into the new talent tree, and then play each spec one at a time to determine what’s fun/boring/lacking about each spec, and slowly start filling in the empty talent slots.
e.g. I played mage yesterday for the first time since BC. I noticed that arcane missiles feels boring when it fires fewer missiles, but if it goes off like a machine gun then it feels kinda badass - so you’d make it fire 2 missiles at level lv.10, and like 15 missiles at lv.120 if you max out that talent, and be castable with 50% less damage while moving if you have a different talent. Why is there no [arcane caltrops] spell that slows enemies or gives you a speed boost if you step on them? I’d give arcane mages an option for 90k HP with ~100k absorb shields. Each spec needs a lot more variety.
Definitely the best way. It would take 5-10 years and have an extremely strong launch; being developed concurrently with retail wow, as they continue to release expansions (creating assets usable in the new game, and then lowering poly counts to use them in the upcoming retail xpacs). It’d be nice if we could port some favourite mounts/pets across. They could have LoD optimization so that the player’s character is extremely detailed w/ 150k+ polys when zooming in, for transmog and very good looking story NPCs.
Their share price just got slammed pretty hard, so it’s not a bad idea if they value steady long-term growth… Unfortunately though, I think we’ll just end up with a bunch of quantity>quality mobile games.
1- I would go back to a talent tree format we had in the past. Being able to fully specialize in one tree or cherry pic a few useful but minor talents in other trees was fun and I felt like offered a lot more customization than the talent trees do now. Today it’s very lame for a game like WOW for as many years as it’s been out, to have such a lousy talent tree. Even worse is each tier for most classes is sometimes one or two abilities no one would ever use.
2- Reintroduce some abilities taken away during pruning. Not all, but some would be welcomed additions and abilities for each class and add some more fun back to them.
3- Five man dungeons that are challenging and fun to play, like they used to be back in the day. Mythics, speed runs, heroics, that can all stay. However would be nice to have some 5 mans or new mode added that makes them challenging past heroic levels, but not speed run or tank/AOE spank fest.
4- For me gear designs have been kind of meh. There are some ok pieces here and there but overall too much cookie cutter recoloring of said item for the fith or sixth time. What is unique again there are some ok pieces IMO but nothing amazing.
5- Take versatility off PVE gear, put it or resilience back on PVP gear and alllow PVP to have their own gear set. It’s stupid to get PVE drops with versatility on it, no one should have to put in time and effort grinds in PVE, to upgrade PVE gear just to get a drop and have it contain versatility on it.
6- Stop designing specs going ahead to be the same 123/ABC flow. In the past rotations were fun, for many classes that fun factor has been destroyed not allowing a more weave your ability approach, instead of monotonously repeating the same ability sequences we have now for hours on end.
Sorry you can have flying 12 months after time travel is introduced. But that will be 6 months after we open rep you need for the quest chain for time traveling which will be broken up into 3 months.
Edit forgot to add this could change of we see fit.
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