So, after Vanilla, Blizz learned that having mobs on the road, having to fight mobs to and from every quest you took was no fun, so BC and after they fixed it. Pretty quickly Blizz learned that making so many little levels that you can’t get to a node right next to you sucks, and they fixed it. Around BC, they learned that having to look up every single quest on wowhead (or back then thotbott) sucked, and they made it so the quest text usually explained what to do. By Legion they learned not to make us do zones in order because people love/hate certain zones. they fixed it so you could choose, and same with BFA.
So… Shadowlands. what the heck happened. Were the 600 you guys fired the ones who had learned all that, and nobody is left who remembers we hate that crap?
And in doing so they learned you can’t tell a coherent story if you’re able to start at the end and work your way to the front, so they fixed it back to the way it should have stayed in the first place. A plot driven narrative that coherently moves from one story point to another.
To be honest the roads started becoming more dangerous starting in WoD and even more so with Legion . This all started when they decided to put Pathfinder in and keeping us grounded just to pad the amount of time we spend playing for their investors.
Problem is, the whole justification of level scaling is dependent upon the freedom it offers players to go anywhere and do anything whenever they want. Regressing back to a progression locked, linear dependent story undoes the entire benefit of this “mobs level with you” system they’ve pretzeled the game into.
Besides, save from Sire Denathrius’ “big shocking reveal” as a badguy and maybe the Necrotic Wake issue, it isn’t like the order of zones is terribly necessary. Really, they could have handled things differently, opened things up, and still put together a coherent story.
Was there an expansion where there weren’t mobs in the road in the first place? Wrath, maybe, because Northrend was so huge and sparsely populated that you can just drive straight through most of the map without hitting any mobs. Fair enough, that’s the desolate tundra of the frozen north. But most of the rest of the world has been more thickly populated than that.
Most of the original world was that way. Note that it doesn’t say you won’t encounter a monster on the road. It says you are less likely to, so there has always been an element of danger in the field. Thinking back on BC zones, I don’t remember the roads being particularly dangerous except around the Ramparts.
uhhh…Vanilla has almost no mobs on roads, outside of the odd patrol group for quests or higher lvl zones that are meant to be more dangerous. That’s why things like the low level trek from teldrassil → stormwind were even feasible.
Although I suppose you could argue that there were too many areas that simply didn’t have roads.
something else they forgot is people actually like getting loot.
I imagine the people that made the game great left long ago and its been coasting by on borrowed power and goodwill.
What? Where? Every expansion I’ve played (which is every single one) there have been mobs to and from every quest and the danger of getting aggro while running on the road. And Shadowmoon Valley in BC barely had roads. Same with Netherstorm. And there were always things on the roads in Blade’s Edge. Grizzly Hills had bears trying to cross near you, there were always a bunch of spiders, wolves, etc in the way in Howling Fjord. Icecrown had mobs everywhere. Mists was the same way. Even birds could aggro you if you were running over a hill or if they were flying low. The list goes on.
The only quests that don’t explain what you have to do are World Quests. Everything else is clearly explained.
This is what I absolutely hate. I can’t stand story on rails, where I have no choice.
What do you mean? I’m pretty sure my moon fire hitting the neutral mob at max range instead of the five hostiles chewing on my face is “working as intended”…
We were told off rip that Shadowlands would be a step back to something more linear involving questing, and that we would, the first round, be on a linear path so a cohesive story could be told. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.