I think it could be the perfect time for a rework/revamp for Darkshore and Ashenvale now or in the future for another expansion. The war is over now and Darkshore really need to be updated now with a rework/revamp of the area. We need to show Night Elves are rebuild cities on their ancestral lands of Kalimdor (at least for Darkshore and Ashenvale) even after the war. Night Elves need to think about their future in Kalimdor. We could make a new area for Darkshore (a third area: Darkshore after the War of Thorns) and Ashenvale could be just an update of the assets for now. If Night Elves can build so many building in so little time (some months?) in Amirdrassil, there is no reason they can build some things in Darkshore and Ashenvale too (2 years).
We need to keep in mind we get a little port really near to the ruins of Auberdine when the Alliance controls Darkshore. So this structure should be still here even after the end of the War of Thorns. So maybe we can use it for something (anchor point between Amirdrassil and Kalimdor?), it could be the first step to rebuild Auberdine.
I think it’s time to rebuild Auberdine as a big city for the Night Elves in Darkshore like in the picture underneath with the new Night Elf assets coming from Amirdrassil new area. This new big city or new Auberdine could be the anchor point between Amirdrassil and Kalimdor for the Night Elves.
by BalintCservenyi
Auberdine will be the biggest city in Kalimdor for the Night Elves and I think it’s time to rebuild Lor’Danel too as medium settlement for the Night Elves in Darkshore with the new Night Elf assets coming from Amirdrassil new area. It’s time to repopulate Ashenvale too with the Maestreas Post, Astranaar, Stardust Spire, Silverwing Refuge and Forest Song.
Please show us the Night Elves/Kaldorei have a big presence in Kalimdor with what I put in this post. Show us there are new cities in Darkshore and Ashevale with some of their old allies.
That would be cool, and I hope eventually all of EK and Kalimdor gets revamped, maybe during midnight? But I don’t expect anything big for the near future, not up to 11.0 at least.
I think cheering for a full-world revamp is a doomed position. They wouldn’t have made such a big deal about how monumental it is to be redoing Quel’thalas only to casually drop “btw we’re also doing the entire rest of the world too!” That’s just absurd.
The OP’s specific notion of revitalizing two zones is much more realistic, but even so the question of how it fits into content has to be asked.
Darkshore would be feasible in the sense that they could just revert it to when it’s held by Alliance, make a phase to that effect, remove the last of the Blight Wagons (which are there as a bug anyway).
Ashenvale I’d just settle for there to be a pre-Cata version ported over. They seem really enthused about the Bronze dragons being able to send players to different versions of the same zone, and I have no doubt they’ll be doing the same method for Midnight in Quel’thalas.
I wouldnt expect anything until am expansion is set or involves northern Kalimdor. There is no reason for them to currently go back and update those zones.
Maybe in the bext saga we will have one on Kalimdor, in similar fashion to Midnight.
Yes Please! Remake Darkshore in fully HD Graphics with HD Assets of Night Elves, Furbolgs, Satyrs, Nagas, Highborne, and etc HD Monsters. Same with Ashenvale Fully with the Orcs vs Night Elves, Felwood, Hyjal, Moonglade, Stonetalon Mountains, Desolace, Winterspring, Feralas, The Barrens, Durotar, Azshara, and etc. Just think about it. HD Everything that Classic World of Warcraft should have had and Cataclysm in general instead of re releasing it with same old graphics and gameplay. Hopefully Retail WoW might do that with Chromie Time with HD Stuff for Outlands, Old World Azeroth, Cataclysm One, Current Timeline Old World, Northrend, and etc.
How does Epsilon prove this at all? Lol
No, Blizzard won’t change an entire zone for the benefit of nothing but RP appeal.
The tools Epsilon uses aren’t anything like the tools the actual WoWdevs use.
The actual way they work is janky and based off of phasing, they aren’t actual hard-coded buildings in the game.
There is legitimately no gameplay benefit to reworking these zones just to make them look pretty. There’s no gain here that would create incentive for Blizz to pay people to rework the zone.
It would be nice to see updated zones, but no.
The actual process of creating and scripting out a zone is far far far more of an arduous process than making something on Epsilon.
On Epsilon all you have to do is make something look pretty, they don’t have to actually make an area stable or plan out a zone through a corporate structure.
Hard agree. It’d be very nice to see the old world updated, i in fact think they SHOULD do it so we aren’t stuck in cata questing and everything flows smoothly with the updated lore and what not, but -will- they? Probably not, unless it is the center of an expansion/patch.
I agree - which is why I think that these suggestions should be accompanied with a push for Blizzard to have more expansions focus on the old world.
As much as I hate BfA, I did love that we got to go back to the old world. The Burning of Teldrassil was a terrible event both in- and out-of-universe, but it only had the emotional impact that it did (and that the game is still paying for) because it was set in zones that the player had a history with and cared about. Lordaeron, too, is a historied and beloved location, and so its destruction, restoration, and defense are automatically more impactful to players than the same scenarios on a random new island would be. Even Arathi and Darkshore, whose updates are more for rare-grinding than deep lore, are hotly argued over because the zones and what they mean matter to players.
And I think Blizzard should embrace that.
Cata showed the pitfalls with revamping the old world. And yet, a lot of those pitfalls can stop being an issue now:
Cata did the heavy lifting to allow flying, and so new updates don’t need to do that herculean task anymore.
Updating a few zones at a time / a region at a time rather than doing both main continents at once would drastically cut down the effort needed, and allow a deeper focus on each zone.
Chromie time allows them to save the old version of the world while making updates, avoiding Cata’s issue of losing the classic setting.
Midnight gives me hope that Blizz has this in mind. World Within (I think that’s the name?) unfortunately does not have me hyped (so much that I keep forgetting the name), in large part because I’m just waiting impatiently for it to be over so we can get to Midnight and I can see (some of) the old world updated. Hopefully the nerubians and ancient Arathi have some juicy lore tidbits that can be applied to the old world, but it’s just not enough for me personally.
I have no way of knowing for certain how much the overall playerbase cares about stuff like this, but I think it does matter, and I hope that old world zone revamps become a common occurrence as future content.
Cata fell short because they had to literally rebuild the entire old world to allow for flying. That’s why a lot content was cut.
Blizz did say in a recent interview that they do plan on revamping the zones, but not on such a grand scale like Cata and only when the zone(s) are relevant to the expansion they show up in.
I’d be curious, years down the line, when these zones are all or even mostly updated through their various associated expansions if they’d merge them into all one phase as if it was a whole expansion release or would they want to do a 2nd update to these zones just for the narrative?
They were saying part of the future updates is to make these zones bigger to incorporate dynamic/dragon flying. These old world zones are like half the size or smaller of all the DF zones. So if the hard technical work of upsizing these zones, similar to Cata and flying, is already done could they push out a fully narrative revamp for the entire old world to create a new cohesive experience?
I’m no coding expert, but I’m pretty sure that with the hardest part, i.e rebuilding the entire world done, it would be easier to make the zones bigger and such. Especially now that blizz supposedly made their teams bigger to push out expansions/content faster.
From Vanilla… Darkshore had these unique persons and great moments.
One single High Elf who was probably still waiting on the Auberdine pier when Deathwing made a new definition of buzzkill.
The only Night Elf NPC who spoke to Night Elves in their native tongue.
The crying Night Elf quest. Nothing motivates me more than a crying night elf dude.
Lots of bear quests. Hunt bears, find a pet bear, and blow horns in a bear druid’s ear to wake him up. I think they used the actual WC3 audio for his repsonse.
