Make all expansions relevant again?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I heard a lot of people say that right now in WoW, the only relevance it has, is based on the current patch its placed in. Essentially World of 8.1.5. Thats an interesting dilemma, but maybe we can make ALL expansions current content. It wouldn’t even be as complicated as scaling, in fact, no scaling would be required! But at the same time also allowing expansions like BC to possibly poke its head out, in the future…

Let me roll out a dream I had last night. If you have ever visited the Caverns of time, you will notice what is basically a large circular area segmented off into (time gates) that lets you travel into the past. What if instead of these mediocre instances no one visits any longer, they were segmented into gates for different expansions. Your character can visit the world of warcraft, and its many expansions, by instancing into your desired expansion. Your character is then also limited to the basics of each expansion, how they were in that time period, including its level (starting back from its base of 1 for each expansion). You can then work your character up through the expansions, including their raids and content.

-Guilds would once again be necessary
-Your guilds can choose to run BT, ICC, Naxx, or even SOO, at any time.
-Blizzard would turn its one game into many games plus add thousands of hours of life to their product.
-It would organize WoW and create a reason to revisit those areas again.
-The almost 80GB download that WoW is right now, would be rectified.

In the end - This is just an idea I had. Im not saying people SHOULD do this, im just bored waiting for Classic to release some info and wanted to start a conversation. :slight_smile:

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Ah, I see you’re also a 600IQ intellectual.

But seriously, this idea is pretty epic.

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its an interesting idea

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Ion said they are “seriously” contemplating bringing retail level squished to 60.
If they made all gear viable to wear. That would be exciting for the Raiding community.

I would need to see original talent trees and some base abilities back on our characters though to go back to retail.

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I like this idea. You could effectively keep your retail character but still be able to use it for old content and not a joke version of it.

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Hoping WoW isnt too far too late though. Heres to hoping Classic brings lots of ppl back :slight_smile:

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Interesting concept.

That’s sort of what I see the BNet launcher turning into for WoW, since Classic is most likely just going to be in the drop down menu that BFA and the PTR are currently in, they could add more expansions to the drop down as they’re completed.

However, the dilemma of splitting up the Classic community across multiple expansions still remains. There will be a lot of Classic server collapses if TBC Classic is suddenly released, and it would only get worse with each additional expansion splitting up the player base.

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I think the main issues I see are.

The number of players available right now in game, coupled up with how HUGE of a world, world of warcraft is.

  • Would that make people so spread out that you never see a single person again?
  • Would they need to combine servers into mega servers?

Then there is the issue with the cash shop and its many character boosts and bought advantages, making the game relevant would also require that P2W feature be taken out. Activision probably wouldnt stand for it.

Heirlooms, you would effectively take away something from the player base, idk if they would allow that to happen.

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I feel like one of the worst things they did that probably felt good or necessary was separate out the professions. Now there is almost no market for ANY goods not of the current expansion as most people just don’t care to level through those, where before they HAD to. Really screwed up my plans for moneymaking as I leveled but hey, it’s great QoL for boosted characters!

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Have you ever seen the price of materials on live? They made players able to level up gathering professions on current expansion nodes, now thorium ore and mithril ore is INSANELY priced. :stuck_out_tongue: Though… I cant imagine the items created are of much value, are they?

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I’ve spent a bare minimum of $40 on WoW tokens purely to buy heirlooms for just cloth and plate. They aren’t even that great now, just passable. With scaling you see your power increase each level, which is nice, but the chunks of health coming off mobs are smaller, which is bad. I can’t imagine what it must be like without them.

If blizzard ever decided to get rid of them I better get a serious refund like 6 months of play time. I don’t feel they’re necessary to the game but I have invested RL money in them so I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be, uh, disappointed if they took them out after all these years.

It’s bad enough they nerfed them into the ground after most of us had spent a great deal of our money purely to make leveling quick and OP. If you don’t like the option I understand but now that it’s there, it’s already watered down they don’t need to take it away. They nerfed it in favor of boosting, which is ironic since I just said I spent RL cash for a nice smooth leveling experience, not an outright boost.

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The created items can’t even be sold for transmog, unfortunately. I did make some coin when I sold my excess after leveling, but really if I didn’t want the deepdive helmet for funsies I’d have been better off selling everything. Some stuff just doesn’t sell as quickly as it used to, I’ve noticed, things that are at the higher end of an expansion in particular. When it sells it does sell though.

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World of Patchcraft started in Wrath. Doesn’t sound like that has slowed down much.

It’s an interesting idea.

At one time long ago people were kicking around the idea on the forums of up-tuning the old content to the new level cap.

So for example, you’d run the exact same Karazhan but at level 120 with the loot having whatever iLevel.

Problem with that is that player power goes up dramatically every expansion. A player in BOAs is basically wearing the equivalent of a Vanilla 60 in Tier 2 gear by the time they are in their 30s. I could see some things being too easy and/or overtuned to compensate for that.

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I like your idea OP, but don’t think it would work for retail. If they did something like this specifically as a different project like Classic, I could maybe see it working.

Blizzard has attempted to do some similar things in the past with certain old content to make it feel relevant again with things like timewalking dungeons for example. Those were added to the game years ago to pose the challenge and the same experience as those heroic dungeons did back when they were live. The player base freaked out (and still do, watch general discussion), complaining and saying it was too hard. Blizzard started to nerf them and make them easier for today’s modern player base. They still complain it’s too hard because they got too used to being able to steamroll through dungeons without having to even think.

This happened when they tried to bring back the opportunity to do some old raids in this way that you were not able to queue up for in LFR. It was again people freaking out saying it was too hard and upset that they couldn’t join a queue.

While I personally really like your idea, I really couldn’t see it working in modern WoW.

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One of the better ideas ive seen i suppose.

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how would this deal with the change in talents/toolkits, some of the abilities just no longer exists

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This is the crux of the problem. They’re going to need “more tech” to resolve that in any kind of “clean” way. It also means they’re going to need to re-imagine how “realms” work as a concept going forward. So many ways for things to go wrong, but if they can hit on a good solution, it could be amazing. But it is quite the gordian knot they have to work their way through.

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That’s actually awesome.