Instead of WoW 2, why not rebuild WoW? I’m not saying rebuild it like cataclysm. I mean completely rebuild the game. Change or fix what has been limiting the code/engine/servers. If you have to change the engine it’s on and rebuild the systems. The game is being held back by ancient subsystems.
It would be as much work as creating a new game. I get that. That sucks. It wouldn’t come with the dangers of making a whole new MMO though. It would allow blizz to keep its player base and build wow into a new game if they wanted to. Instead of hoping a new game would be attractive enough to bring and keep players.
Live WoW is basically a WoW 2 vs many of the other iterations of the game. It’s like blizzard made a whole new game on old platforms. Instead of bandaiding new games onto old. Take the old into the new.
This would require too much effort. As long as people are willing to pay full price sub for a 15 year old game(classic players), or are willing to buy a new expansion every year(retail players), why would blizz make a new mmo?
The whole point of WoW classic was to return to a time when the game had MUSCLE behind it. No point to ‘rebuild’ it because the strong team that made it is basically gone. Now it’s just a buncha weak muscle doods who don’t like to flex so you will never get a good game out of rebuilding or making new.
I don’t think the OP is talking about changing how the game works. I think he’s talking about a remaster. Just fixing things like the graphics, making all the structures solid so LoS works everywhere, fixing pathing exploits, ect.
People always crap on the devs, but I don’t think they’re the problem. The suits at the top just don’t give them any creative freedom. Everything has to check all the metrics now.
Shadowlands is pretty much WoW 2. From what I’ve seen, it bears little resemblance to the original game. The leveling experience is being completely revised. You pick a single expansion and work through it. At the end of that one expansion, you’re at the new content. From what I understand, most of your DPS/healing/tanking relies on the new Soulbind system, which sounds thoroughly confusing to me.
One aspect of Classic that I love is its simplicity. For me, WoW was at its best in WotLK, when they hit the sweet spot in complexity. For PvE the strategy was simple. Max your hit rating until it hits the 100% mark for three levels above, and then focus on your primary state followed by haste and/or crit. They tried to simplify it further in Cataclysm, but they didn’t quite succeed. At some point they completely reversed course and decided to make the systems so complicated that not even simulators could keep up. Now you have a bunch of other weird stats that are thoroughly confusing to anyone who doesn’t read Icy Veins or MMO Champion or Wowhead on a daily basis:
Mastery: Originally intended as a class-specific boost – What is is these days???
Versatility: WTF is this?
Avoidance: Why isn’t this rolled into Stamina?
Speed: Why isn’t this rolled into Haste?
As if this weren’t broken enough already, they’re now adding Soulbinds on top of this. It’s honestly not appealing.
There isnt a large MMO market anymore, there will never be a wow 2, they will just eventually end up releasing low effort expansions for the people who never quit like EQ does.
Too much would have to be changed in order to do what the OP is suggesting. Any system that is changed will end up angering a portion of the playerbase.
It’s the reason why you see so much vitriol around things like “flying / no flying” and “changes / no changes”.
It would be easier to design an entirely new game as, at that point, the developers can define what systems they want and what systems they don’t want without people who have adapted to the existence of such systems already in the game being affected. There is no “you’re taking x away from me” because nothing has yet been given.
It will have to happen by a new company as it is widely accepted that Blizzard is gone, now that Activision purchased them, and their leadership seems incapable of reapecting their customers in a worthwhile way.