As cool as a heroic world mode would be, I think Blizzard and some other players would worry that segregating the world into more phases would make the game feel more devoid of players. Open world content is meant to be more casual and base-line in terms of difficulty, and the last time Blizzard took something casual and made it harder, players complained and people quit in droves (LFD was so cancerous back at the start of Cataclysm that I’m still finding tumors).
That said, I do like the idea of having more ‘elite’ areas/zones that you’re required to navigate with other players - like old Silithus. If Blizzard made it something you could queue up for to make it easier to group up with folks, I think it’d be pretty cool. Maybe we could have a zone like GW2’s Silverwastes or Bozjan Southern Front in FF14.
Roads that aren’t always clear for example, I don’t believe anybody has ever wanted. If anything one of the things that “original formula” proponents like most about Vanilla/TBC/WotLK is that almost to a fault, the roads were clear (with a handful of impactful exceptions, such as Stitches in Duskwood). Tons of mobs sitting within aggro distance of the middle of the road is a “Neo-WoW” feature that started creeping in with Cataclysm and became the norm by Legion.
I’ve not seen many advocate for loss upon death either, aside from a handful of oldschool EQ superfans, and the Jailer sending enemies is more or less just another form of timer, something which is notoriously unpopular with world players and is more of an irritant than a challenge.
And as I noted in a prior post, the level of optionality is a big factor. Of course people who like to faceroll through everything uninstanced wouldn’t like the Maw, and especially not being required to do it. This is why I’m suggesting to make the normal world phase stupid easy and to put actually challenging elites in heroic/mythic mode. People who don’t want that challenge can just stick to normal, just like with dungeons and raids.
I miss those too, but the only players who’d encounter these areas would be those doing M+, who probably don’t want to be arsed with clearing elites to get into dungeons. Anybody doing queued dungeons doesn’t even know where the dungeons are located in the world any more, which is depressing but a different topic.
I sat out most of Shadowlands due to a combination with being busy with life (buying a house, moving to a different state, etc) and sheer lack of interest in the expansion. The premise, story, and zones are just so unappealing that it severely curbs my interest. Desire to do something challenging is not so strong as to be able to override shortcomings in the other qualities of the expansion.
Note that in BfA and Legion I played quite a lot and pushed the edge of what was soloable — in BfA I maxed out horrific visions and in Legion I completed several mage towers. Those expansions were interesting to me, and so I felt motivated to play. Hoping Dragonflight is more like Legion/BfA in that respect.
If they just went ahead and linked the servers down into 6-10 megaservers, this wouldn’t be an issue. The majority of players would probably be in the normal world phase anyway.
I like the idea in concept but the issue with group requirements is that the content then becomes difficult to do once it’s no longer current/relevant.