Greetings, lovely people of the forums. I’ll give you a second to recover from the shock of my post title.
Ok, let’s get started.
So, during conversation regarding a post I recently made about difficulty tuning from 1-60 in retail, someone suggested that all old zones be shut down completely. So that only the current expansion exists. I hated this idea, personally. But it sparked an idea.
What if all the old expansions were retired (not deleted, see below), but the core game of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor and their dungeons were retuned to offer just the right amount of challenge and sense of risk/reward and then made the default leveling experience for all players?
You see what we’re cooking with here?
What it solves:
The core game is kept alive and relevant. Instead of mobs and bosses dying near-instantly, they live long enough to matter, and we get actual mechanics in dungeons again. No more snooze-fest.
A real adventure from 1-current expansion, all taking place in the core game. This would be the most friendly intro to new players, and it would honor the heart of what the game really is. I trust that Blizzard can figure out how to do this properly.
No more spread out content that’s overwhelming and impossible to maintain properly.
Gives new players a chance to acclimate and learn in an environment that isn’t confusing, overwhelming, and full of disjointed story that is impossible to navigate as it is now.
A couple suggestions to help improve the “epicness” of the core game, new player experience:
SOD style raids using an LFR group finder system. There would be weekly quests for max-level players (like we already have) so that they can fill groups and help new players learn raids. Molten Core, BWL, Naxx, etc would be used to do this at level 60, and some dungeons could be made into 10 man content like in SOD. No brand new content, just making what we already have better and relevant. FF14 already proves that this works and people like it.
Make crafting more relevant to the 1-60 experience. This allows players to learn crafting early on and producce items that actually matter up to level 60. This would probably look like fewer recipes that are more meaningful. Each profession producing some usable items other than gear alone.
Design it in such a way that players who want to stay at level 60 can lock their xp and simply enjoy core-world content and helping new players as long as they want.
I feel this is the best route to take because it solves so many issues at once. It doesn’t take away from end-game either. End-game will always offer the greatest challenge and rewards. But why not offer a more whimsical, yet meaningful experience to players who are new or simply love playing in the old, core content while still enjoying the improved graphics, systems, and combat?
And, it would be easy to maintain indefinitely. Then Blizzard can focus on making new expansions while doing small maintenance on the “core leveling exerperience” and everyone wins.
Edits:
I was just thinking that breaking up the dungeons into level categories would be a good idea and then add heroic versions of all those dungeons for level 60 players. This would really give newer players a chance to make a gradual progression into end-game.
Make story-telling style cutscenes to get the player up to speed on what’s happened in the past. Then just spread those out on their way to lvl 60, including some main scenario quests that tie the relevancy into the core game. Just an idea. Almost like you’re a budding adventurer hearing tales of heroism and tragedy from the past. Now you hear the stories and make your way to the new expansion and the current threats to Azeroth.
When each new expansion comes out, set that to level 70 (or w/e you want it to be) and retire the previous expansion to level 60 (by simply scaling it all back). This would require some sort of “batch file editing system” to do easily and repeatedly but I have full confidence that Blizzard knows how to do this.
To be clear, I don’t mean delete the old expansions literally. I mean don’t have it be part of the main 1-60 experience at all. Just let it be on the outskirts where people can find it if they want it.
Thank you to Sabetha for summarizing these proposed changes:
I wouldn’t retire the other expansions so much as I’d just choose one to be the default experience and the one that new players get funneled into to introduce them to the world and the major players in it.
If a veteran wants to play TBC though, they can knock themselves out. They’re probably not gonna get confused and lost in everything.
That said I don’t think funneling them through the Cata zones is going to help much with the story disconnect cause they’re gonna hear about this Deathwing fellow then all of the sudden it’s off to deal with (insert latest expansion threat here).
It would work if they revamped the world a second time to make the storylines more future proofed so that they just introduce you to the various factions that hang around beyond the current expansion. It’d be nice to strike a balance between “going on an adventure” vibes of Classic but with the lessons learned from modern quest design so it all flows much nicer.
Or the other idea in your last thread somebody had of just doing the cliff notes version of each expansion in like 5-10 level batches each. Then players learn we went to Northrend and fought the Lich King but we don’t need to tell them about Naxxramas or individual zone storylines.
I’d also agree with increasing the challenge a bit once all the above is done, and also adjusting XP rates across the board so that leveling remains basically just as fast as it is now.
It also doesn’t need to be Dark Souls, but there should be some middle ground between that and “so easy you have to be AFK to die”.
You know what they could do is make story-telling style cutscenes to get the player up to speed on what’s happened in the past. Then just spread those out on their way to lvl 60, including some main scenario quests that tie the relevancy into the core game. Just an idea.
Almost like you’re a budding adventurer hearing tales of heroism and tragedy from the past. Now you hear the stories and make your way to the new expansion and the current threats to Azeroth.
It would be great to see a, say, 400-500 quest “leveling” path that TASTES each continent/expansion (75 quests in Azeroth, 50 in BC, 50 in Wrath, etc.), as a sort of “time traveling” catch up path that gets you to the new expansion, with lore cut scenes at the end of each mini campaign.
Just a whirlwind tour of the sapient lore points of each expansion.
The best example was the WC3, where, in, what, 30 scenarios you got a whole bunch of lore, laid out in a mostly linear fashion, making it easy to keep up with, and it filled in a lot of blanks.
Something like that, but in game, as an optional leveling path. I wouldn’t even drag new players through, they can keep their current starter zone, “go level in DF”, whatever style for brand new players. But something to go back to so folks could more easily “catch up” with 20 years of lore compressed into 10 hours of storytelling.
Other than that, frankly, they should just let folks click a button and get a 70 with green starter gear.
The concern I have with this is that it risks being too much. By focusing on only the core game as the default leveling experience, Blizzard can create a full package. No bouncing around, no having to choose which content to bring in from each era. Just a standard, World of Warcraft core game experience for everyone. Keep it simple. It’s easy to maintain, it respects the origins of the game, and it serves everyone.
Not asking they change that. Asking for a new “path of the timeways” super long questline and a few cinematics that can get us from 10 to 70 and hit the highlights.
Like in the Wrath section, there’ll be either a scenario where you can participate in killing the Lich King, or, at least, a questline that leads up to the LK death cinematic.
As you move along, every now and then your Bronze Dragonflight Historian pops in with some RP and dialog telling you what’s going on. “Who’s this Uther guy anyway?”
Yeah, I’ll be honest, the title could do with a bit of different phrasing. This is an interesting idea otherwise, but… hm… I wonder of the technical difficulties it could end up encountering.
Just have the previous expansion be the leveling one imo.
It introduces the newest mechanics, while being most tied into the current story. Instead of getting people connected to lore characters that no longer matter.
The only reason they “no longer matter” is because we’ve allowed this to happen. When people think of World of Warcraft, they don’t think of Dragon Isles. They think of Horde and Alliance. Azeroth. Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The heart of what Warcraft is. This is true to this day, despite the core characters and heart of the game being disregarded for so long.
It’s because they hate anyone who tries to shine out. It’s not a problem though, Blizzard isn’t going to erase my post. I have done nothing wrong here, clearly. It just is what it is sadly.
Absolutely not, there is no reason to get rid of the content in the game. To say nothing of the fact that vast majority of content is newer and better polished than those anyway.
The core game is already kept alive and relevant, it just isn’t leveling.
No. Letting old expansions grow weaker relative to the player is fun, everyone has been hounding them for the whole expansion to fix BfA raids for soloability, we don’t need to make it worse by deflating levels so everything is always 0-10 levels below the current max.
To be clear, I didn’t mean delete it literally. I meant don’t have it be part of the main 1-60 experience at all. Just let it be on the outskirts where people can find it if they want it.